I am going to be in Ottawa next week giving a lecture and talking to the students in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University.
Forty years ago I attended what was then called the Institute of Canadian Studies at Carleton. At the time I was working as a newspaper reporter and the idea was that if I knew more about the country it might make me a better journalist. Like most plans, this one gang aft agley. Instead, for better or for worse, I discovered Canadian history and never got back to the newsroom.
It is going to be interesting to return to Carleton after all these years and compare the concerns we had then -- foreign ownership of our economy, American cultural domination, the "Quebec question" -- to today's hot-button issues.